Participating Artists:

A respected, award-winning photographer lives and works in New York; currently on the faculty of the City University of New York where he is a professor with the Department of Art and Design at Queensborough College. Allen's photographs are reality-based images as well as metaphorical documents of which the primary foundation is grounded in behavior, enlightenment and irony.

Allen’s work expresses the essential truth, that a culture's power is clearest when presented on its own terms. He shares the belief of photographer Diane Arbus, who states; "the more specific a thing is, the more general." The artist, Danny Dawson, says wryly that Mr. Allen has a "keen eye for the obvious;" his lifelong work is evocative of the contemporary black experience. The images place subjects, drawn from the richness of black life, within universal paradigms. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants.

His aesthetic vision is rooted in music, gesture and ritual which render American culture both locally and abroad. His photographs are in museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian, The National Gallery. He has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and abroad and his extensive commercial and corporate work has been seen on the covers of numerous periodicals, magazines, journals albums and compact discs.

A painter, children's book author/illustrator and Teaching Artist. Among many teaching opportunities throughout the years, Lisa also taught Children's Book Illustration and other 2-D Courses at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1994 until the winter of 2013, when she moved to New York.

Lisa has a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Illustration from Syracuse University. Her interest in shapes of color and line draws influences from Black and White photography, Printmaking, and the drawers and painters from many generations and many backgrounds using a wide variety of materials and techniques. Drawing inspiration from observing the everyday and actively recording color notes and sketches, Lisa then jumps into her imagination back in the studio.

Coffey earned a BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996, an MA in Art History from Hunter College CUNY, 2005 and MFA from Queens College CUNY, 2014. She lives and works in Queens, New York.

After finishing graduate work in Art History she began teaching in the CUNY system, returning to school to complete an MFA and now teaches studio courses in Drawing, Color and 2D design at Queensborough Community College CUNY. Beginning in 2012, she has exhibited in Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan culminating with a solo show "small good things" in May 2014. She is a continued presence in New York and is pursuing shows nationally and internationally.

She is a painter and photographer; her work is a recounting of human experience, most recently through domestic interiors, documenting time and place.

Di Giorgio's paintings have been shown in solo exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia and Kansas City, Missouri. She is a recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Foundation awards and a PSC-CUNY grant. As an Assistant Professor at Queensborough Community College, she teaches Painting and Drawing, and incorporates Service-Learning and Global and Diversity Learning in her drawing classes. She also currently serves as Director of the WCA (Women’s Caucus for Art) Youth Representative Program at the United Nations.

My work references the decorative genre to which women artists were often relegated and employs it in a manner that is intentional and sober, using an aerial perspective that, at times, appears to approach abstraction. Intended as a tribute to the work that women have done throughout the ages to sustain and support life, it is also, at its deepest level, a tribute to the concepts of sustenance, hospitality and goodwill, which are not defined by gender and are found in all cultures.

Ken Golden began working at Queensborough Community College as a fulltime instructor of studio art in 2000. Prior to that, Golden taught as an adjunct at many schools, including NYU, RISD, University of Pennsylvania, City College of NY and Parsons New School of Design. His graduate degree is from NYU/ICP, granted in 1990. Shortly after Golden began teaching at QCC the digital art and design program was launched and he is now the coordinator of that program. He is an active artist exhibiting locally and internationally. His work is primarily in print but also includes video and animation. Golden’s concern continues to be community; he is investigating the pride of individual identities, and how they can co-exist in a single environment.

Susan Natacha González

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Susan Natacha is an artist, educator and art therapist. She holds degrees in Art, Psychology, Art Therapy and Education. She has augmented her art studies in the United States with studies abroad at the University of Salamanca in Spain and the Lorenzo Di Medici Institute for Fine Arts in Florence, Italy.

Susan Natacha has presented the topic of art, education, creativity, art therapy and child development in a variety of conferences, on the radio and has responded to interviews for several publications nationally and abroad.

As an artist Susan Natacha utilizes various media and concepts to explore and further understand creative processes and the idea of change. She deems the practice of art as an opportunity for the development, understanding and fostering of relationships with other individuals in accordance to any given space at that time. Susan Natacha believes we are not isolated in our creative development, growth and process – we are a collective within and out of our bodies. Susan Natacha also cherishes learning about the viewer when given the chance to discuss what they “see.”

Jaimie Lyle Gordon

A fine art photographer, and has exhibited and published her photographs since the early 1980’s. She has a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, (1986) and an MFA in Fine Art Photography from Hunter College, NYC. (1992) Her pioneering use of Surrealist methods of hand-worked montage and projection techniques to explore the photographic relationship between memory, melancholy, myth, and the feminine imagination puts her in the vanguard of Post Modern Photographers and the Post Modernism Movement in Photography, which was prominent in the early 1980's. Jaimie's inclusion in Portrait: Faces of the 80's, the influential 1987 exhibition at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts which featured the images of the most important groundbreaking photographers working in the decade of the 1980's, acknowledged her role as an early originator of utilizing appropriated altered old family or found snapshots, and personal scrapbook writings, as innovative subject matter in her photographs.

Applying surface embellishment methods, especially painting, beading, stitching and ceramics in her photographic works demonstrates Jaimie's ongoing concern with what has been historically described as "women's work" . Her subject matter seen through this guise of decorative formalism, suggests that "women's work" has political and subversive potential. "Photography about photography" is a constant visible theme, this critical self portrait underlies Jaimie's past and present work.

Jaimie Lyle Gordon is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art teaching photography at CUNY Laguardia Community College and CUNY Queensborough College for over 15 years. Through her many years of teaching photography, Jaimie has cultivated her observations into a unique and challenging classroom experience. Applying a creative accessible approach to a conceptual and technical understanding of the communication of photography, as a visual language and practice, Jaimie's students are able to confidently express their individual viewpoints using photography as an expressive art.

Born in Elmhurst, Illinois and received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied with Ray Yoshida and Whitney Halsted. She did her academic requirements at the University of Chicago and won a Fellowship to Yale University Summer School of Music and Art her junior year, where she studied with Mel Bochner, Robert Mangold and Bob Moskowtiz. During her master's degree work, she was the Graduate Assistant in Painting and Drawing, which included teaching drawing and painting to undergraduates at the school.

After graduation, Healy moved to Africa, where she traveled and lived. She later toured Europe and then lived in Nova Scotia, Canada with her first husband, Richard. Presently she divides her time between a Manhattan apartment in the East Village and a house/studio in Port Jervis, New York.

Her work was represented for many years by Phyliis Kind Gallery in New York and Chicago, as well as Susan Whitney Gallery in Canada. While in school, she co-curated a Mail Art Show with artist Ray Johnson, called "Intercourse," at the Wabash Transit Gallery. Currently, she has an independent agent, and schedules studio visits by appointment. Her work has been exhibited in Europe, Canada, the United States and Japan and is in numerous public and private collections. In fact, one of her large pieces is in the Queen's Bedroom in Ottawa, Canada, as part of the Canada Council Art Bank. Healy has received many grants and commissions and is currently creating proposals for some large-scale sculptures to be made up in the country.

Coming out of the Chicago Imagist tradition, she explores images and iconography from the news, religions, mass media and her travels. Her work focuses on themes ranging from ecological disaster, human relationships, symbols, feminism, consumerism and the natural world. She works in many media and sometimes jokes that her output can look like a "group show.!"

Healy teaches at Queensborough/CUNY, as well as privately, upstate at Art Studio On Main, her studio

Ms. Healy has had solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Europe and Japan. Her work is in many public and private collections and she is currently working on a body of paintings and sculptures for an upcoming show in New York City.

Hull has opened solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and Milan, Italy. He has also been included in numerous group exhibitions in New York and abroad. In collaboration with Future Expansion Architects, Hull recently completed a large-scale outdoor public art sculpture titled The Accelerated Ruin, which was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music. His work has been reviewed or featured in publications such as the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, Time Out, The LA Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Aside from studio practice, Hull has curated numerous exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles and conducted interviews with artists in various international publications. He holds a BA from New York University in Studio Art and a 2006 MFA from the Parsons School of Design in Painting.

Fu C.W. Lien

Born and educated in Taipei, Taiwan, Fu C.W. Lien is an art worker practicing art education, studio work and writing. In 1980s, she worked as an assistant researcher in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and became an assistant professor in Tamkang University after she studied her B.A. and MFA degree in America. In 1992, she was granted a Fulbright scholarship and returned to the United States to complete the Ph.D. program in art history at the City University of New York, Graduate Center focusing on contemporary feminist art.

In Taiwan, She was involved with the influential feminist group "Awakening" in Taipei and engaged in establishing first Taiwan's Co-op gallery: Space II. She held several individual shows and group shows with other women artists there. In US, she had individual show in Art Studio, TX, group shows in Blue Mountain Gallery, Chelsea and Queens Museum, NYC.

Philip Listengart

I was raised and educated in New York. I received my Master's degree in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, where I studied with Albert Terris and Richard Navin. I find consolation in my family, friends, teaching, art, jazz, food, fishing, humor and all things of pulchritudinous sublimity.

MacDougall has produced a number of large-scale works that play off organic and inorganic metaphors. The projects stem from a fascination with the natural sciences, in particular, microscopy, the method of using microscopes to view objects that cannot be seen by the unaided eye. Snapshots of bacteria and cellular platelets retrieved by this method are a metaphor for his sculptures. Although stagnate, they remain imbued with the sense that the forms and surfaces will continue to undulate and recalibrate as time passes. On a macro level, MacDougall draws from geological processes, such as the dynamic effects of plate tectonics and erosion of the landscape.

One of his large-scale projects, Microscopic Landscape, was installed in New York City’s Union Square Park from 2012 - 2013.

He studied at SUNY Purchase College of Art and Design, graduating with a BFA in sculpture.­ His studio is located on the banks of Hudson River in the Town of Dobbs Ferry, NY.

Hayes Peter Mauro

Mauro received his doctorate in art history from the City University of New York Graduate Center, and currently is an assistant professor at the QCC. His first book, titled The Art of Americanization at the Carlisle Indian School was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 2011. That book addresses the role of pseudoscientific knowledge and representation in the effort to assimilate Native American students at the Carlisle Indian School, a federal boarding school established for such purposes. Mauro's current book project, titled Messianic Fulfillments, is in discussion with the University of Nebraska Press and he anticipates publication in 2017. This project examines the role of visual culture in the Christianization of Native Americans from the early efforts of utopic Puritans to the boarding schools of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to Mauro's scholarship and teaching, he curates the student art exhibition at the college each year and has an active interest in photography.

Katherin McInnishttp://katherinmcinnis.net/index.html

My work in video, new media, and public practice has recurrent themes of landscape, surveillance, and alternate histories, and explores the convergence of still and moving images. My most recent movie, Hat Trick, premiered in the new Projections section of the New York Film Festival. Hat Trick is an animated exploration of magic and moon landings, made entirely with "behind the scenes" stills from pre-digital cinema and NASA simulations.

My projects have been shown in major film festivals (New York Film Festival, Slamdance, European Media Arts Festival) as well as in museums and galleries (Pompidou Center, Paris; Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin;San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Art in General, NY). In the 2008 Whitney Biennial, I worked with the art collective Neighborhood Public Radio on "American Life”, a public-access audio project. I received my MFA in Film, Video and Performance at California College of the Arts in 2002.

Greg Pitts is a graduate of New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University with an MFA in Ceramics and holds a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Mr. Pitts is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of ceramics here at Queensborough Community College. He has taught and lectured at a variety of institutions including Bennington College, Rhode Island School of Design, the Ohio State University, University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He has also taught ceramics and kiln construction abroad in both Portugal and South Korea.

Recently, Pitts has been traveling to Poland to work with some of the Baltic state’s finest ceramic artists in the porcelain tableware factories there and to Sweden, studying masonry stove technology and contributing to research of ceramic material associated with Viking Age iron and steel production as part of Marta Pitts’ doctoral research in the zooarchaeology on Gotland. Along with Pitts’ strong and steady career as a ceramics instructor and master kiln builder, he has also exhibited nationally and internationally and has been reviewed regularly. His gallery affiliations include John Elder Gallery, New York; Nancy Margolis, New York; Mobilia Gallery, Cambridge; Ferrin Gallery, Northampton; Pewabic Pottery, Detroit; the Clay Place, Pittsburgh; the Clay Studio, Philadelphia; Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe; and Lill Street Gallery, Chicago. His work has been reviewed in American Craft Magazine, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Review, American Ceramics Magazine, Studio Pottery and Studio Potter Magazine.

Pitts has won awards from Greenwich House Pottery, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, the Auckland Institute and Museum and the Cleveland Institute of Art, amongst others. Pitts’ works can be found in both private and public collections, in the US and Europe.

Barron Rachmanwww.barronrachman.com

A New York City artist and master black and white printer. Rachman worked as a photojournalist in Afghanistan, the Balkans as well as the Middle East during the 1990’s and early 2000. His photojournalism has appeared in such publications as The San Francisco Chronicle, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Time Out Magazine, the annual report for the Soros Foundation in addition to the 2002 book Journey Home: The Humanitarian Challenge in Kosovo.

Beginning in 2001, Barron redirected his focus to his photographic art and most recently exhibited at Museum Of The City Of New York, Street Shots/NYC. Furthermore he teaches at such institutions as The International Centre Of Photography, Brooklyn College, New Jersey City University, Kingsborough Community College, Queensborough Community College, Touro College, and Purchase College. Exhibit events include: Beneath The Borqua, 39 Exposure Gallery, San Francisco; Collectrium, Scope Basel, Switzerland; Collectrium, Scope Miami, Miami

Yisun Rho

An experimental artist and graphic designer based in New York City, Rho's experimental art explores the expression of human thoughts and emotions through the use of words and phrases as a form of art. She is continuously fascinated with typography-based art, an art style that can be utilized to portray various moods, ranging from comical to poetic. She has taken various approaches to creating typographic art; digital installation, motion graphics, 3D animation, paintings, drawings, print-making, and collages. Through her work, she seeks to convey her opinion that typography, and thereby language, are powerful tools that can be applied as a means of communication and influence. Also, her graphic design clients include Unicef, Scolastics, Wilton Industry, Emporio Armani, Emanuel Ungaro, Bookspan, Doubleday, Jaeger, Anne Klein, and Weston Gallery. She holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design and an MFA in digital media from CUNY Lehman College.

Michael Ritchie

Ritchie received a BFA in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago, and a MFA in sculpture from the University of Arizona. He worked for 16 years as paste up layout artist for a couple of catalog companies in Chicago and New York. After the New York office closed down, Ritchie free lanced for various companies including Avon for a few years. Then, I began adjunct teaching over the next number of years at several institutions including Nassau Community College, New York City College of Technology and William Paterson College. I have been at Queensborough since 1987 part time and then full time.

A writer, photographer and filmmaker, Roger's work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum and Queens Museum as well as various galleries, and is represented in various public and private collections including the Allan Chasanoff Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His writings about photography have been published in national and international anthologies and journals, including the Gazette des Beaux Arts, the College Art Association’s Art Journal and Afterimage. He has also written for television, radio and theatre. In 2000 his play, “Small Potatoes”, enjoyed a successful off-Broadway run at the John Houseman Studio Theatre in New York City. He is presently Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Queensborough Community College.

Jacqueline Schlossmanhttp://www.jacquelineschlossman.com/

Currently lives and produces her landscape work in Brooklyn, NY. Her photographic projects question the meaning of nature and its relationship to representation. She recently included a portfolio of images in a book published by Stanford University entitled The National Park to Come by philosopher Margret Grebowicz.

A visual artist, independent curator, graphic designer, and professor of art living and working in New York. Working in a variety of mediums, Seslow shows his work both nationally and internationally. He teaches various fine art graduate and undergraduate level studio art and design courses simultaneously between four colleges in NYC and the metropolitan area. He is the creator and curator of Concrete to Data as well as the co-creator and co-curator of Encrypted Fills.

Nicholas Strigahttp://nstriga.com/

I am an art director with over 25 years of experience in advertising and freelance work. I have worked as a VP Creative Director at one of the top NY Ad Agencies creating ad campaigns for TV and print, from conception through finished product. During my career I have received numerous awards including a Clio, Cannes Film Festival, Art Directors Show, Addy, Print Award and a One Show award.

I now share my knowledge and experience by teaching. I am an adjunct professor at CUNY Kingsborough and Queensborough College. I teach a variety of courses dealing in visual arts, including graphic arts and design, typography design and illustration.

I also freelance as a graphic designer and illustrator. My work has been exhibited in New York City galleries in Soho and Midtown and has also been shown in New Jersey and Long Island.

My art reinterprets everyday life from a totally fresh and unique perspective. No matter what I create, from advertising campaigns to illustrations, I am dedicated to making sure each and every piece stands out from the crowd.

Beata Szpurahttp://www.bszpura.com/

Szpura is a painter, illustrator, and art educator. Her illustrations have been published by all the major national publishers: The New York Times, The Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, New Yorker, Money, New York Magazine, Henry Holt Publishing, Grey Advertising, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, Scholastic, Town and Country, Harper Collins, Wine and Spirits, Icon Shoes, and others. The Museum of Modern Art in New York distributed Beata’s holiday cards and mobiles. She has illustrated several book covers for Farrar, Straus and Giroux, including Newberry Award winner Joey Pigza Loses Control. She has created illustrations for the advertising campaign of Olive Garden. Icon Shoes is currently selling upscale leather products decorated with Beata’s fashion illustrations. She has exhibited her paintings in the USA, France, Ukraine and her native Poland and is a member of a painters’ group called The Emotionalists that was featured in an exhibition at the QCC Gallery in 2014. She is part-time faculty at Queensborough Community College and Parsons The New School for Design.

Lumin Wakoahttp://www.luminwakoa.com/

Wakoa received her BFA from University of Florida and her MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Wakoa works within painting, collage and video mining the gap between representation and legibility. In 2010 she was the recipient of the Dedalus Foundation Master of Fine Arts Fellowship for painting, and concurrently she was selected as the VCU Arts Fountainhead Fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University (2010-2011). In 2013 She was awarded a CUNY Professional development grant. She has had solo Exhibitions at Reynolds Gallery in Richmond Virginia, and at Rhode Island College in Providence Rhode Island. She has been included in numerous group shows in New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, Florida, and the Netherlands. Wakoa currently lives in Queens and has a studio in Brooklyn.

Samantha Yoo

A graphic designer and educator based in NYC and she lives and plays in Manhattan. As a graphic designer, she had multiple projects including New York City bus advertising, web design, logos and billboards. Also she explore a lifelong fascination of simple geometric shapes, colors and light through space. Her paintings are mostly acrylic on canvas and Swarovski Crystal.

Mr. Yurkovitch attended Queensborough Community College where he took his first formal photography class, studying with Jules Allen. His academic career continued with obtaining a B.A. in Fine Arts at Queens College with a minor in Psychology and Human Behavior in 2002. He went on to get his Masters in Fine Arts from the International Center of Photography/Bard College in 2008.

Mr. Yurkovitch has taught classes and workshops in numerous programs in New York City including Project Prize and the Rochdale Village Youth Council Queensborough Community College, the Learning Annex, and the International Center of Photography. His teaching career began while he was still a student at Queenborough as Mr. Allen’s teaching assistant. He has maintained this connection to the academic world throughout his career and is currently an Adjunct Lecturer at Queensborough Community College in the Department of Art and Design. His photographs have been in local New York galleries and shows as well as in publications.